I wanted to be an oceanographer, actually. It's a way of going underwater. I've always been interested in how deep it was, you know.

I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.

I was four or five, and my mother gave me a big black tablet, because I kept complaining that I was bored. She said, "Then write something. Then you can read it." In fact, I had just learned to read, so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write something - and then read it!

Novels are almost like music or poetry - they just come to me in simple sentences, whereas I think my pieces get more and more complex ever since I've started using a computer.

It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact precisely consistent with the oxygen deficit that occurs as blood flow to the brain decreases. "Everything went white," those whose blood pressure has dropped say of the instant before they faint.

Burroughs's voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American.

In terms of work, I never felt that I've done it right. I always want to have done it differently, to have done it better, a different way.